Digital BW, The Print

CD,

I found that with my CRT, I had to work in a 'dim cave' if I set my 
monitor to about 85-90 cd/m2 to get a good match.  With my Samsung 
213T LCD monitor, I work in a fairly bright room, but I still use 85 
cd/m2.  I also calibrate to D50.  Surprisingly, this gives me a near 
perfect monitor to print match, both from a color and tonality 
standpoint.  I tried 100 cd/m2 and higher, since I had fairly bright 
overhead lighting (Philips D50, 98 CRI fluorescents), but the tonal 
range was way off.  My monitor always ended up being much brighter 
than my prints, suggesting a luminance level that was too high.  So, 
I experimented with dozens of settings.  I have used both Gretag 
ProfileMaker 5.05 and EyeOne Match3 with an Eye One spectro, and they 
both seem to give me the same good results.

I use a special Photoshop Lab file to check my monitor calibration.  
It exposes flaws in your monitor calibration, at least the gamma and 
endpoints.  Using D50, 2.1 gamma and 85 cd/m2, I get a near perfect 
calibration using this test file, even with my reasonably bright room 
lighting.  More important to me, my monitor to print match is nearly 
perfect, using a recently created custom printer profile.  

I don't know if this is because I am now using an LCD.  It isn't what 
I expected, but it works great in my working environment.

Lou Dina

****************** 
> These settings (D50 or 5000k, and White Luminance of 80) are great, 
as long 
> as you work in the DARK. Thats the required conditions for using a 
low lumiance 
> monitor setting. The D50 whitepoint will look very yellow in 
typical room 
> lighting. Thats to be expected. So either run your CRT brighter 
(which will burn 
> it out faster) and still work in very dim conditions, but be able 
to calibrate 
> to a somewhat higher whitepoint (say 5800k), or darken your room to 
near 
> black, and work in D50 prepress conditions. Or get a bright LCD, 
and move into the 
> light... but with the necessary adjustments to your other factors 
to balance 
> this!
> 
> C. David Tobie
> Product Technology Manager
> ColorVision Business Unit
> Datacolor Inc.
> CDTobie@...
> www.colorvision.com
> 
> 
> 
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